Andrew Sullivan recounts an
interesting observation by left-winger turned hawk Christopher Hitchens:
On the way there, we were confronted with protestors with "No War On Iraq" posters. Hitch noticed the Orwellian resonance of this slogan. The slogan, strictly speaking, is a lie, one of many promoted by the anti-war left and right. There is no possibility of a war with "Iraq." Half the country – inhabited by the Kurds and Shia Muslims is already protected from Saddam’s murderous designs by British and American air-power. The remaining rump is not a country as such; it’s a population terrorized by a police state run by a sadistic maniac. We are not therefore at war with the country or people of Iraq; and by equating Saddam with Iraq, these so-called "peace-protestors" are de facto parties to his vile propaganda, the notion that Iraq is Saddam and Saddam is Iraq. That lie was recently displayed in the humiliating spectacle of grown human beings not simply being required to vote for Saddam, as Hitch observed, but actually to dance in the streets to celebrate him, to humiliate themselves out of terror. This disgusting spectacle wasn’t like "1984." It was "1984."
